Dr Carole Couper

• Associate Professor in Strategy and International Business
• PhD in Management 2016
• MSc Management Research 2011
• Chinese Studies Licence (French degree/BA equivalent) 1989  

Dr Carole Couper joined Birmingham Business School on 1st August 2022 as Associate Professor in Strategy and International Business. She previously worked as a Lecturer in Executive and Professional Education at Sheffield University Management School.

Prior to entering Academia, Carole worked in industry in the Instrumentation, Life Science and Food & Drink sectors. Her experience as an International Sales & Marketing executive included senior roles within Scottish & Newcastle plc (McEwan’s Ale, Newcastle Brown Ale) and Diageo plc (Guinness, J&B whisky and Malibu Rum). Notably, she was responsible for managing the team tasked with the brewing under licence of McEwan’s 1856 - the first ever British Ale brewed in China – in partnership with state-owned Chongqing Brewery (Sichuan Province, South-West China). More recently, she has also worked as a Consultant for the Life Science sector, both in the UK and China.

Her undergraduate degree in Chinese studies, and her time in industry witnessing the numerous challenges encountered by British SMEs in their efforts to internationalise to the Chinese market, later informed her decision to engage in a PhD in Management (International Business). Her doctoral research explored how and why UK SMEs were able to develop internationalisation networks between the UK and China despite significant institutional differences. She graduated with a PhD in Management at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, and her thesis was subsequently awarded the 2016 Adam Smith Business School Alumni Prize for PhD Excellence.

Carole’s research interests revolve around internationalisation and networks that span distant institutional frameworks, such as the UK and China. She is particularly interested in understanding how smaller firms and individual boundary-spanners may manage and reconcile institutional differences in the context of internationalisation. Her current research is also concerned with the challenges of conducting qualitative research when studying phenomena that span multiple institutional frameworks and involve the collection and interpretation of bilingual – and cross-institutional - data. She has published in the Journal of International Business Studies, the Asia-Pacific Journal of Management and Management & Organization Review.

A French citizen and long-term UK resident, Carole has also lived and worked in Belgium, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Carole teaches on the following programmes:

• MBA Singapore
• MBA Executive
• MSc in International Business

Carole is a member of the Academy of International Business and British Academy of Management (BAM).

Within BAM, she has joined the Steering Committee of the Research Methods Special Interest Group (RM SIG), and she is a member of the Executive Education Working Group (EEWG).

Carole has been invited to join both the Journal of International Business Studies’ and the Management and Organization Review’s Review Boards. She has been the recipient of excellent reviewer awards from the Journal of International Business Studies (2021) and the Family Business Review (2015; 2014).